%0 Journal Article %J Technology Innovation Management Review %D 2018 %T Tread Carefully: Managing Identities and Expectations in High-Tech Industry–Academia Collaborations %A Els De Maeijer %A Tom Van Hout %A Mathieu Weggeman %A Ger Post %K critical discourse awareness %K industry-academia %K interaction %K leadership %K Open innovation %X Industry–academia collaborations are in continual flux. The changing role of academics is reflected in the interaction between industry and academia. In this article, we examine how meetings as a genre are used to establish and alter the roles and identities of participants. First, interactional analysis shows that a meeting set-up revolving around academic presentations confirms an old role division between collaborators where academic contributions are vulnerable to undervaluation. Second, we found that so called “leading individuals” show critical discourse awareness that allows partners to reposition themselves in relation to each other. They use interactional strategies to create a joint purpose, empower participants to jointly realign, and motivate them to openly share progress. This results in a power shift where academics feel free to pursue their agendas. With this article, we try to understand how the choice of linguistic features shapes social and interpersonal relations in industry–academia collaborations by focusing on open innovation as a socially contingent process. %B Technology Innovation Management Review %I Talent First Network %C Ottawa %V 8 %P 29-43 %8 10/2018 %G eng %U https://timreview.ca/article/1191 %N 10 %1 Technical University of Eindhoven Els De Maeijer is a linguist and PhD Candidate at the Technical University of Eindhoven, Netherlands, where she is investigating open innovation collaborations between industry and academia. She challenges the idea that creating openness is just a matter of tweaking the conditions of collaborations. That is why she intensively studies the interaction between the collaborators themselves. Her work has been published in the Journal of Innovation Management, and she was the runner-up in the award for Best PhD Student Paper at the World Open Innovation Conference in 2017. %2 University of Antwerp Tom Van Hout is Associate Professor and Academic Director of the Institute of Professional and Academic Communication at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. He holds a secondary appointment at Leiden University, the Netherlands. He studies professional and media communication to understand how expertise is performed, audiences are anticipated, and social events get represented. He is a founding member of two international research networks: Discourse in Organizations and NewsTalk&Text. Recent publications include journal articles in Text & Talk and IEEE Transactions in Professional Communication and book chapters in edited volumes published by Routledge and Oxford University Press. %3 Technical University of Eindhoven Mathieu Weggeman is Professor of Organization Management and specifically Innovation Management at the Faculty Industrial Engineering & Innovation Sciences at the Technical University of Eindhoven, the Netherlands. He focuses on understanding and explaining innovation processes in technological, knowledge-intensive, and cultural organizations. He has a special interest in leadership and strategy in teams and organizations, and he supervises research on the motives of professionals to share knowledge. He is the author of the book Leading Professionals? Don’t! A Continental European Perspective. %4 Fontys University of Applied Science Ger Post is a Lector of Business Entrepreneurship at the Fontys University of Applied Science in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. He specializes and offers consultancy in entrepreneurship, personal competences, internal entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurship in networks. Ger has been involved in research aimed at changes in business, such as open innovation, clusters and alliances, facility sharing, and campus development. He is connected to the Fontys Center for Entrepreneurship and to the Centre of Expertise for High Tech Systems and Materials. %R http://doi.org/10.22215/timreview/1191